The Doglion

Arsene Wenger, the FC meets Arsenal FC. What do you expect from the friendly in Cologne?

Arsène Wenger: “It will of course be a very emotional game for the fans and Lukas Podolski. Lukas has a strong connection with FC Cologne, he played there since he was ten years old, and has given a lot for the team. Now he is returning to his home, for his first game as an Arsenal player and I am sure, that he will be will get a fantastic reception. It is an important match for our entire team, because it is our last match before the start of the Premier League season on the 18th of August 2012. We want to complete our preparations in Cologne with a strong performance.

What kind of impression do you have of Lukas Podolski?

Wenger: “We had decided to let Lukas work on his fitness in London along with some other players, while we went on our Asia-Tour for the club, this is why I only had one week to work with him. But even in this short time has he shown his qualities, which we know of him and were the reason why we signed him – he has a very intelligent playstyle. He is technically strong, very versatile, can create and score goals. He is left-footed and that is very significant.

Last season, Arsenal FC finished in third place of the Premier League and qualified for the Champions League. With what aims are you going into the new season?

Wenger: “We are very ambitious and are working very hard to prepare the team for the new season the best way possible. It is our priority once again to fight for the championship and Champions League and to finish the season as successfull as possible. What this means in the end, we have to wait and see. The championship will have strong teams again that are also fighting to win. We want to play the games in the way that we are used to, and I believe we are able to measure up with the best. With this same attitude we will also play in the Champions League.

You have been manager at Arsenal FC for almost 16 years, which is a very long time. What is your recipe for success in you managing career?

Wenger: “We have been present in the Champions League for 15 years and I think this shows that our philosophy works. I will not say that this is all thanks to me, but I think it pays that we always have shown a lot of engagement and continuity and have always been loyal to the way we play football. In my job, however, one is always dependent on the future and not the past. Maybe one day I will look back into the past and think that I could have done this or that better, but at the moment I am completely focused on the new season.

The FC Cologne will start the new season in the 2. Bundesliga with a very young team. What importance does youth development have at Arsenal FC?

Wenger: “The Arsenal Academy is absolutely indispensable for our club. If you look at our squad, you can see that we continue to do what distinguishes us: to develop young players and to give them a chance at the top level. We have some young players that already have experience, for example Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is just 18 years old. Jack Wilshere is 20, Aaron Ramsey and Francis Coquelin are both 21. There are more talents, who we believe can make the breakthrough this season. We have took Nico Yennaris and Serge Gnabry to Cologne and in Asia we had Chuks Aneke and Benik Afobe, who have shown their quality, Ryo Miyaichi just the same. Beyond that, we have a group of players at the club that are 16 or 17 years old, that we haven’t involved in the preparations yet, but whom we surely will see in the new season. Youth development is very important for us.”

Arsenal FC was in Cologne last season for a friendly as well. What connects you to FC Cologne?

Wenger: “Last year we had a good match in Cologne. The match had a high tempo and was a good test for our players. I am confident that this year we will have the same positive experience. The FC has a great history and is known for its strong fanbase. There is always a good atmosphere in the RheinEnergieStadion. We are looking forward to the match.”

So I’m moving my blog again. I find that tumblr is just more streamlined and straightforward. So future posts will be there, of course you can get the a RSS feed there as well as follow on twitter. My tumblr will have more frequent and bitesized content, as well as more elaborate and long posts, which I will probably cross publish on this blog as well. I’ll keep thedolgion.com around as obviously there’s still good stuff on here, and whenever I do write up a larger, more well thought out blog, I’ll put it up here as well.

So this has nothing to do with gaming.

Lately I’ve been looking into the Zeitgeist Movement again. If you read one of my older posts, you will know that I am in deep support of the movement and the values that it stands for. I felt like expressing some of my own observations and thoughts on the reality of living in Mongolia.

I’m constantly angry and frustrated about how things are here. If you live in Mongolia, and especially in the capital, you most likely feel this way too. There’s just too much to be pissed off about in this society. I will highlight a grievance at a time, but will try not to keep it not too whiny, but rather objective with some distance.

My sister studies in one of the most expensive high-schools in Mongolia. I won’t say which one because, well, she’s still studying and I don’t know what kind of consequences it could have for her if I named her school.

Anyway, so this school is so expensive, that by design, you have a high concentration of the richest kids of Mongolia in one single place. Those kids are brought up by their parents to be good at the capitalist game. These are kids who own the latest fancy gizmos like iPads, wear expensive clothes and get picked up and brought to school in Hummer trucks. They are  grotesquely disconnected from the general population, and often have the view that they’re better than other Mongolian kids.

Clearly this is a direct consequence of being raised by parents who mostly became rich after the communist breakdown, a time when society was in chaos. The introduction of the free market paradigm allowed the most opportunist people in Mongolia to quickly get rich, at the cost of other people. Basically, you have a bunch of assholes who got rich by fucking up others, which is the way the game is played. Get rich or die trying, etc.

You see, Mongolia is now a country with an extremely capitalist society. Politicians are businessmen who went for power to serve their own ends, rather out of a genuine desire to lead the country. There are lots of children of politicians in that school, too. And they will play the game the way they learned from their parents.

In that school, children are pressured to pursue their undergrad degrees in the most prestigious schools. They are brainwashed to believe that only in those schools they will be able to reach something. Only if you go to Harvard, or Yale, or another Ivy League School can you become anything of worth. Consequently, they look down upon Mongolian universities (which clearly aren’t that great in comparison), and the people who study there as the lower class. Oh what an embarrassment it would be to end up in a Mongolian uni!

Even average or less prestigious school in the US are out of the question for these kids. They are as snide and arrogant as their parents. It’s a mindset that they’ve grown up in, and it’s appalling. And the competition that takes place between them, it’s fucked up. Student A wants to apply to Harvard, and asks student B to proof-read her essay. Student B will see Student A as a direct competitor for her own prospects of getting into Harvard (as if there were limited places available for Mongolian students). Therefore, student B will actually change and sabotage the essay of student A. Then student C would see that A’s essay was sabotaged and tell her that. Student A will then look at student C and say: “You’re trying to backstab me!”. Where is the togetherness and cooperation? Mutual respect and trust? All fucking gone!

This happens in high-school for these kids already. The observations are:

• teenage kids will back-stab and betray each other for their own gains, even if the threat is only perceived
• they will think of themselves as ‘better’ and others as ‘lower’ people simply because they are richer. They think of themselves as the “Elite” of Mongolia, something that is hammered into their brains by the school itself
• kids who don’t like this environment are forced to either partake in it or be outcasted and they fall into depression, this petty subculture becomes their whole world. they just don’t know any better environment!
• the pressure applied on the kids by the school and their parents is ridiculous to begin with
• the behavior shown by these kids indicates that this is just the mirroring of the way their parents act, who are incidentally the people with money and power in Mongolia (politicians and/or business owners, etc)

If we as avid video game fans want games to be recognized as the art form that it is, we need to look at the games we play with a certain respect. When I read a review of a video game, chances are that the review separates the game into its components and rates them separately, without any regard to the possibility that maybe those elements were crafted and designed to be working in unison to give the player the gameplay experience. This treatment of games from a functional point of view, as if to say “does this game give me fun?” is more akin to judging a vacuum cleaner, or a car instead of a work of art. Read More

Yesterday over a good round of beverages with my friends, the discussion went to Final Fantasy 7 and Crisis Core. I vented my disappointment about the shit-poor character development of the game, to the shock of two of my friends. “It’s Zack’s story!”, “The story was fucking good!” and even “You’re not a true Final Fantasy fan!”  were some of the comments I got. I don’t want to go in depth on why Crisis Core is one of the most horrible abortions of game writing by Square Enix to date – you can read my review on that if you want. I whined about how Aerith was such a badly written character, devoid of any real personality and how Zack’s relationship with her was one of the most overrated and pretentious love stories in video game history. The most ridiculous comment I reaped was “But she was an ancient!”. Ha ha. Read More

Oh My God this is game awful. To put it into perspective: Final Fantasy 7 was the first RPG I ever played. I was 9 years old, the game came in 3 discs, which was by itself already epic, and it left its imprints on my memory ever since. When I look at FF7 today, I have to congratulate Squaresoft on a job well done. The story, though confusing and contrived was highly dramatic and one really felt a sense of nervousness at the sight of Sephiroth. On top of that Square slapped their tried and true RPG gameplay and everything was well. Crisis Core was supposed to be a work of love and pure fan service for those who loyally defended their favorite game as the best RPG (if not the best game) of all time. Instead, it’s a game that does not even survive on its famous name. Read More

I’m an idealistic person. I like to think that people are capable of establishing a “good” society. A fair society. A place where children do not have to deal with disillusionment in their teens that the world is actually a shitty place full of jerks and “bad people”. I myself became a sort of sarcastic asshole during my teens, reveling in self-pity about how everything is so horrible in this world. It embarrasses me to proclaim it like this, but I suppose all people went through some stage in their lives where they were different, and can’t say to be proud of the persons they were then. But it is our development and ultimately impacts the way we are now. Read More